Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

First atmosphere detected on a habitable-zone rocky world

In a major milestone in the search for life on other planets, astronomers have detected, for the first time, an atmosphere ...
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Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory - Mt. Hopkins, AZ

From its establishment in 1966 as the Smithsonian Mount Hopkins Observatory, FLWO has hosted a world-class suite of telescopes designed for a wide variety of purposes. The largest visible-light ...
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Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS)

Gamma rays don’t pierce Earth’s atmosphere, but when they strike the air, they produce faint flashes of visible light. The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) is a set of ...
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REU FAQ

Application Content Questions: If you can't find an answer to your question at our FAQ page, please email us at [email protected]. Please check your SPAM folder for email from ...
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SAO/NSF Solar REU Program

This summer, scientists from the Solar and Stellar X-Ray Group (SSXG) and the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Group (SSP) at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) will host ...
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Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)

Black holes in the modern sense were first predicted as a consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 1915. These objects are so dense, they are surrounded by a boundary called an ...
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Scientists Make First-Ever Detection of Mid-IR Flares in Sgr A*

An international team of scientists, including multiple astronomers from CfA, have made the first-ever detection of a mid-IR flare from Sgr A*. National Harbor, MD - Using the James Webb Space ...
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Billions of Celestial Objects Revealed in Gargantuan Survey of the Milky Way

Cambridge, MA – A new astronomical survey is a portrait of gargantuan proportions. It shows the staggering number of stars bristling among the wispy bands of dust in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
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Alien Planet Found Spiraling to its Doom around an Aging Star

Cambridge, Mass. – For the first time, astronomers have spotted an exoplanet whose orbit is decaying around an evolved, or older, host star. The stricken world appears destined to spiral closer and ...
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The Most Precise Accounting Yet of Dark Energy and Dark Matter

Analyzing more than two decades' worth of supernova explosions convincingly bolsters modern cosmological theories and reinvigorates efforts to answer fundamental questions. Cambridge, MA – ...
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Astronomers Directly Detect How Turbulence Between Stars Distorts Light

Using a distant quasar as a beacon, researchers identified the tiny, turbulence-driven ripples imprinted on the quasar’s radio signal as it passed through a particularly chaotic region of the Milky ...
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Astronomers Discover Rare Distant Object in Sync with Neptune

This object, called 2020 VN40, is the first confirmed body that orbits the sun once for every ten orbits Neptune completes. Cambridge, MA — A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | ...